Industrial robots are to be used for, among other things, the joining of components. For this, position tolerances, in particular, of workpieces that have been supplied, which are to be joined to the workpieces that are held by the robot, complicate the automation.
Aside from structural compliances, such as a flexible robot, or a flexible end effector connection, for example by means of a so-called “remote center of compliance” (“RCC”), diverse theoretic solution approaches for such so-called “pin/hole” problems have been proposed, e.g. the detection of contact forces by means of additional contact sensors, and the determination of the correct joining trajectory based on said contact forces. These approaches, however, have rarely been put into practice due to a variety of problems.